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American Cancer Society Awards $42.9 million in Research and Training Grants

Grants will fund investigators at 68 institutions across the United States

ATLANTA—April 1, 2014– The American Cancer Society, the largest non-government, not-for-profit funding source of cancer research in the United States, has awarded $42.9 million in national research and training grants to 103 scientists and health professionals in the first of two grant cycles in 2014. The grants will fund investigators at 68 institutions across the United States; 89 are new grants while 14 are renewals of previous grants. The grants go into effect July 1, 2014.

For more than 65 years, the American Cancer Society has funded research and training of health professionals to investigate the causes, prevention, and early detection of cancer, as well as new treatments, cancer survivorship, and end of life support for patients and their families. Since its founding in 1946, the American Cancer Society’s extramural research grants program has devoted more than $4 billion to cancer research and has funded 47 researchers who have gone on to win the Nobel Prize.

The American Cancer Society’s research and training program emphasizes investigator-initiated, peer-reviewed proposals, and has supported groundbreaking research that has led to critical discoveries leading to a better understanding of cancer and cancer treatment. Grant applications are ranked on the basis of merit by one of several discipline-specific Peer Review Committees, each of which includes 12 to 25 scientific advisors or expert reviewers. The Council for Extramural Grants, a committee of senior scientists, recommends funding based on the relative merit of the applications, the amount of available funds, and the Society's objectives. No member of the American Cancer Society's Board of Directors or National Assembly may serve on a Peer Review Committee or as a voting member on the Council for Extramural Grants.

The Council also approved 133 research applications for funding totaling nearly $78 million that could not be funded due to budgetary constraints. These “pay-if” grants represent work that passed the Society’s multi-disciplinary review process and are beyond the Society’s current funding resources, so are available for funding by individual donors who wish to fund research that would not otherwise be funded. In 2013, additional donor funding totaling $8,866,115 covered 46 “pay-if” grants.